Read any student essay, and you’re likely to get abstract descriptions: The vacation was “wonderful” the food tasted “great,” and the dog was “cute.” When we ask students to add more detail, or be more descriptive, we often get lists of adjectives. What we really should be asking for is concrete detail, or sensory detail…

At the beginning of this school year, I started tackling my long to-do list. While the boys were at school, I was at home working away on my blog and creating resources. After a while, I lost the motivation to create. It became a struggle to blog and create resources, because I wasn’t able to use them to help a room full of students master a difficult skill or engage them in a new way…

I really love interactive books because they can be used in so many different ways in the classroom. So I thought I would share with you some ideas…

Seasick students. An R-rated museum exhibit. And a few teens covered in flour. Check out seven stories of middle and high school field trips that truly deserve a do-over.

Back in August, I wrote about this idea that I took from Brooke Brown’s blog, Teaching Outside the Box. Basically, you get yourself some project cases, and you use them to store your lesson plans. What’s nice about these is that you can put everything you need in file folders. This means no hole punching for binder storage or…